Prejudice is bad. Bias is bad. Any feature of distinction that is used against those unpossessed of it is bad. The scale of equality must always remain in balance. If it is not, then society will become a representation of discrimination of all sorts, shades, and colours, to the grief and suffering of its constituents.
Prejudice is bad. Bias is bad. Any feature of distinction that is used against those unpossessed of it is bad. The scale of equality must always remain in balance. If it is not, then society will become a representation of discrimination of all sorts, shades, and colours, to the grief and suffering of its constituents.
The conscious mind can create as many biases and prejudices as it can, depending upon what it believes to be the ‘right opinion’ to possess. Blatant and pronounced bias is witnessed, when there is legislation done in favour of one section of the society, to the disadvantage of others. The prevalent quota system is a case in point.
All conscious actions emanate from the feed they receive from the subconscious mind. It is all about the management of the world within and not merely the world outside. If our inner world is at peace with itself, there can never be a conflict with the outside world, regardless of how hostile, the outside world may be.
What you invest in your subconscious mind will determine what you harvest at some point of your life. If you plant in the vast gardens of your “thought”, ill-will and feelings of envy, jealousy, hatred; the emerging inner person will be a full representative of these negative traits. In contrast, if you plant and sow harmonious thoughts, goodness of heart, peace and tranquillity, your growing personality will display these positive traits, while interacting with others.
If the subconscious mind is told unabatedly that you as a colleague are unwanted by other workfellows, the conscious mind, will conspire, and will usher in creating real conditions for being unwanted. It therefore follows that we can guide our conscious behaviour by the power of the subconscious mind.
As an example, try to tell yourself, as late as possible in the night, at a time that is beyond the normal sleeping time, that, “I wish to get up tomorrow at 5:00am”, the subconscious mind will wake you up at 5:00am, try it, if you don’t believe this scribe. While on overseas visits, when I do not entirely rely and depend upon the alarm of the clock or the operator’s wakeup call, I merely talk to my subconscious, and thus far it has never let me down.
The recognition of keeping a stable and harmonious relationship between the conscious mind and the subconscious is the first step, for a manager, towards building a stable and composed personality. Through the power of the subconscious you can change future and destiny. Never surrender, as a supervisor, to the thought “I can’t” instead, re-affirm with full confidence, “I Can” and “I will”. Managers with such attitude create confidence and instil cohesiveness in their teams.
Neuroscientists say the conscious mind is the conduit to feed the subconscious mind. The conscious mind thinks and these “thoughts” get accumulated as big reservoir on the subconscious plains. Good thoughts breed goodness, evil ones give birth to malefic actions.
As managers, we take decisions through the conscious mind that argues, agitates, validates, rationalises etc, while the subconscious works slowly, by gathering the generated thoughts, which over time mature into personality traits and these then start to reflect in actions and reactions. So, there is an imperative need to control the conscious mind, to ensure that the fodder it offers to the subconscious mind is full of goodness and positivity.
Most neuromanagement scientists accept that the subconscious mind, unlike the conscious mind, has no filters for validation of a thought, as being good or bad, acceptable or repulsive. The subconscious merely accepts all that it is fed with. Fill it with purity and spirituality the resultant actions will be positively pure.
Carl Gustav Jung, in his treatise ‘The Aims of Psychotherapy’ says, “I have no readymade philosophy of life to hand out… I do not know what to say to the patient when he asks me, “What do you advice? What shall I do?” I don’t know either. I only know one thing: when my conscious mind no longer sees any possible road ahead and consequently gets stuck, my unconscious psyche will react to the unbearable standstill”.
Our conscious mind can keep on weaving formidable fortresses of thoughts that may be as weak as a cobweb, yet our mind befools us, as manager of people, that these fragile thoughts, would not crumble, once they come under the hammer of practical application at work. We start to read much ‘between the lines’, when actually the blank space between the lines is really blank.
Presumption to know more than the written or spoken word is a fallacy that can lead to distortion and conflict. A closed door never opens upon hope, it does only when the right combination is applied to the lock. Similarly it is the balance between the conscious mind and the subconscience that guides us towards greater rectitude, in our behaviour, with others. Invest into the subconscious mind, with no expectations, but only with this singular motive that you are investing into your own goodness, righteousness, fair attitude and right balance. Prejudice has no visibility. We hate some people because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them (Charles Colton). Dogs only bark at strangers and not upon those they know.
Bias is an offspring of ignorance. Prejudice that is built on the edifice of being considered as truth is indestructible. It follows the notion, that prejudice is right. We have historically held biases of, say, not dealing with natives of a particular geography or area. It reins in our minds, no matter how just it may sound.
I was once given concession (at the start of my career in late seventies) in time for the submission of an official document, as part of an official assignment, purely on the ground that the receiver of the document belonged to the same place, from where my parents hailed. Being given an uncalled for preference over the others is a case of blatant bias. Tall claims of “equal opportunity employer” go up in smoke, where the interviewer asks, “From which area, do your parents belong?” What? The candidate is being hired not his parents! This unconscious bias can be found anchored in both visible and invisible diversities and also in internal and external dimensions.
The prominent biases feature upon culture, race, religion, ethnicity, creed, gender, age, linguistic preferences, etc. The obscured bias that lies within the ambit of unconscious mind is inbuilt in the thought process, values, beliefs, preferences, etc. Sitting on interview panels, at different geographic zones and in multicultural, multiracial, multi-ethinicity environments, I have come across, the not-so-visible bias, emerge in questions that had direct or indirect reference to gender, gender orientation, age, marital relations/status etc. Talented candidates become victims of this unannounced bias of the subconscious.
The undeclared sympathy for the candidate from lower income strata, or for the single parent or for the racially or linguistically discriminated are also equal manifestations of prejudice and bias. An unjust advantage given for any reason is an act of prejudiced behaviour. I have witnessed expression of unconscious bias based upon the colour of the attire worn, the width of the coat’s lapel, the tie design, the brand of the pen, watch and cufflinks to the colour of the socks, of the candidates. As bad as it may sound, some of the best are rejected as a result of bias and prejudice.
It is my belief that it is much easier to manage and counter open and declared bias or prejudice; it is most difficult to fathom, the underlying hidden and obscured bias of the conscious mind. It does not normally become visible but it certainly acts upon the situations, we handle and the decisions, we make.
The writer is a freelance columnist
